University of Tennessee Athletics
Rainey Ready For Return
August 28, 2012 | Track & Field
Aug. 28, 2012
» SEC Digital Network Website
By: Sean Cartell
SEC Digital Network
KNOXVILLE, Tenn.- All he knew was that his mother had been in a car accident. She shared very few details and her son assumed that she had survived the accident mostly unscathed.
When Tennessee distance runner Jake Rainey returned home to Clarksville, Tenn., for the winter holidays, he quickly realized the severity of the situation.
His mother, Marie, had her car rear-ended while she was sitting at a stop sign and was seriously injured in her back, neck and brain. A middle school teacher and a single mother, Marie Rainey had been unable to return to work since the accident.
“She actually didn’t even really tell me that there was anything wrong after the wreck,” Jake Rainey said. “When I got home for Christmas break, she told me all about it.”
It had been a successful season for Jake, especially late in the year. He clocked a personal-best 8K time of 25:12.25 at the 2011 Southeastern Conference Cross Country Championships, hosted at the Vols’ home course in Maryville. He placed in the top-30 individually at the league meet and was 35th overall at the NCAA South Regional.
Concurrently, Marie was having a very difficult time. The constant visits to doctors, along with the injuries suffered during her car accident made her daily activities that much harder.
She didn’t want to be responsible for taking Jake away from the pursuit of his goals. But at the same time, she was in great need of a helping hand during her recovery.
“A couple days before I left to go back to school, she made it very clear that she wasn’t telling me to do this,” Jake Rainey said. “But she thought it would help if I was able to redshirt. It had been a hassle for her trying to find someone to take care of her as much as she needed. Everyone else around town was so busy and they didn’t have as much free time as a student does.”
Jake Rainey, a down-to-earth student with a practical view of life, quickly understood that taking care of his mother should be his top priority.
“Really it came down to the fact that my mom was having so much trouble functioning,” Jake Rainey said. “She was at home and couldn’t always remember stuff. It was kind of what I needed to do.”
Jake informed his coach, J.J. Clark of his decision to redshirt the indoor and outdoor track and field seasons.
“I called Jake’s mother and realized he was needed at home,” Clark said. “My staff and I agreed that it was the best situation. The love for his mom and his family was great to see. Sacrificing his season showed great character.”
It wasn’t just that Jake Rainey would be missing the track and field season. It was also a campaign in which he was expected to be a valuable point-scorer for his Tennessee squad. He was pleased that his coach respected his decision.
“He was pretty supportive,” Jake Rainey said of Clark’s reaction. “I just talked to him within reason about it. He was counting on me to maybe score points at the SEC meets. I felt bad letting the team down, but sometimes there are things that are just a little bit important, at least for me, and he respected that.”
Jake continued to attend classes at Tennessee, but would make the drive home each weekend to take care of his mother. Sometimes that came at the expense of not only his sport, but also his academics. Still, he knew what he had to do.
“A lot of the weekends, I would get done with class on Friday and go straight home; it’s about a three-and-a-half hour drive,” Jake Rainey said. “I would spend the weekend with my mother and come back late Sunday to be ready for the next week. I came home for the breaks and didn’t have much time off. I really didn’t have any free time. I am a journalism major and have a lot of projects that require being there on weekends. I came home as much as possible.”
He had been making excellent progress in his training before redshirting the track and field season and, though he continued to put in the time necessary to be a talented runner. Even so, it was hard to judge his own progress.
“I was still running pretty much every day,” Jake Rainey said. “Some travel days, I wasn’t able to run, but I was running mostly every day and getting some of the workouts in. The biggest impact was not being able to race, which is a key part to the development of a runner. You don’t know where you’re at if you don’t have a benchmark to know what you’re able to produce in competition.”
Jake Rainey will find that out on Friday when Tennessee begins its 2012 cross country schedule at the Belmont Opener in Nashville. It will mark his first time in competition since last November.
And if that isn’t good news in itself, things are starting to get back to normal for his mother, too. Earlier this month, Marie was in the classroom to start another year of teaching at Rossview Middle School.
“It feels really good,” Jake Rainey said. “It’s almost getting back to a total sense of normalcy. This will be the seventh season I have run cross country; she’s been teaching forever. Even though life isn’t totally back to regular, it’s got the feeling of it and getting back to normal.”
Neither Jake nor his coach expect there to be much difficulty in acclimating back into competition.
“I expect great things from Jake this season,” Clark said. “He really had a good SEC run last year and he brings honesty, dedication, hard work, sincerity and a great team spirit to us.”
For Jake Rainey, the lessons he learned over the past eight months away from the track, have proven more beneficial than anything he might hope to learn on the track.
“The whole experience kind of makes you not take anything for granted anymore,” he said. “You kind of take meets for granted when you’re going to them every weekend. Now, you look at it and you’re ready for every chance you get to race. Racing is probably my favorite thing in the world. The meets mean a lot more now because I realize that something might happen and you might not be able to have another run.”
